@jeremyO9F911O2

5 months ago

I mean SMR are not what is in naval vessels. They aren't modular but rather quite bespoke. They also use a level of enriched fuel that civilians are not generally allowed access to. In reality SMRs kinda suck, but they market well. Nuclear has 3 big pushback points; Safety, Waste, and Build Cost. Waste is mostly overrated, every new design is safety obsessed. But SMR is really focused on the Cost category. Specifically Unit Cost, as in one SMR reactor is significantly cheaper than one large scale power plant. The problem is Unit Cost is kinda meaningless. Yeah of you need a reliable power source in Antarctica, or the Canadian northern archipelago islands. Unit Cost is a big deal for reliable power. But on the primary grid, gigawatts is what matters. My saying on the energy crisis; you solve it with gigawatts. Then you see an SMR design sign a rated capacity of only a handful of megawatts, and you realize it's not enough. SMR are like the wind turbine of nuclear, you need a bunch of them to do anything useful. Why not just build a large scale power plant instead? With 900 MW generator units, per reactor. And that's just based on existing tech legacy tech. Most SMR I see hyped are 1-10 MW per unit, when large scale can build 1 GW per unit. I'm not saying SMR is dumb, I've been to many an isolated community that can totally benefit from reactor technology in the low megawatt scale. And SMR are totally the type of solution they need. But the main grids need real systems and we need to be willing to think big again. Also we need to stop obsessing about cost and profit on electricity sales. Because the product is more important than the price. Deliver abundant reliable consistent energy into your workforce, economy, and citizen lifestyle. And you find an output of significant profit. Like the payroll department in a company doesn't generate revenue, yet try to not have one and see if employees continue to show up without consistent income. We don't ask our roads to generate profit, why do we still obsess of it this way for electricity. Infrastructure is infrastructure.

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